Saddam tried for Kurdish genocide

SADDAM Hussein refused to plead as he went on trial yesterday
for the killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers in
northern Iraq in 1988.

The start of the new trial, the second in which Saddam faces the
death penalty, comes amid worsening sectarian violence between
Saddam's fellow minority Sunnis and Shiites that has raised fears
Iraq is sliding towards all-out civil war.

Saddam and six other defendants, including his cousin Ali Hassan
al-Majid, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for allegedly ordering poison
gas attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq, are charged over their roles
in the eight-month so-called Anfal campaign in which hundreds of
thousands were driven from their homes as 2000 villages were
destroyed.

One survivor recalled at the weekend how the first scent of gas
came to one of the Kurdish villages. Robitan Hama Amin said it had
a sweet smell, like perfume. "People wanted to inhale it," Mr Amin
said.

Chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon told the court in Baghdad
yesterday: "It is difficult to fathom the barbarity of such acts."
He said elderly people, women and children had been deported to
detention camps "not because they committed crimes, but because
they were Kurds".

Saddam, 69, repeating his position at the start of an earlier
trial for crimes against humanity, dismissed the US-sponsored
tribunal as a "court of occupation" and refused to state his
name.

When asked to enter a plea, he replied: "This needs a lot of
books." The judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

The seven defendants, including Saddam's former defence
minister, face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity
for their role in Anfal  or "the spoils of war" after the
title of the eighth chapter of the Koran  which Mr Faroon
said had left 182,000 people dead or missing.

Saddam and "Chemical Ali" face the additional, graver charge of
genocide. All the main charges carry the death penalty.

Iraqi forces are accused of using mustard gas and nerve agents
in the campaign, launched after Saddam declared large rural areas
of three predominantly Kurdish provinces prohibited areas.

A series of eight campaigns between February and August 1988 was
aimed at driving Kurds from their homes into "collective villages"
where Iraqi authorities could monitor them.

Those who did not die in the military attacks were arrested,
displaced, tortured or killed, prosecutors say.

Victim Mr Amin was sitting at the table with his wife and seven
children when Iraqi fighter jets began dropping chemical bombs.

"I was totally blinded. I couldn't see anything," Mr Amin, now
80, said.

"Everybody tried to escape. People vomited. Their skin burned.
Some people lost their minds."

He clenched his fists. "I'd like to put a rope around the neck
of Saddam Hussein myself and drag him through all the Kurdish
villages," he said.

REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES

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